html vs php for search engines - is parsing php more search engine friendly?

[nickyfraggle]

Hello!

Not sure if anyone can say for certain, but I've created a database driven site which uses php to interact with my mySQL database. I've heard that scripting languages are less search engine friendly, and have managed to FINALLY parse php in my html pages.

What I was wondering was whether parsing php in html pages is actually more search engine friendly than simply using .php files to begin with?

Basically, its a free business listing that I'm doing for experiece (I'm a university student working on getting the all important industry/practical experience!) and I'd like to make sure that people's details are found and indexed as easily as possible by search engines.

I mean...it does make sense that html pages are better, as the information is there straight away, rather than only appearing when the page is opened by a user (and it is pulled out of the database), but does parsing the php make it any better?

What do you all think? Any advice would be really appreciated!

Thanks,

Nicky

[Spookster]

I don't think you quite understand how server-side languages work. PHP is only every executed or seen by the server. It only outputs HTML back to whoever requested the page whether that be a person with their web browser or a search engine bot.

[mlseim]

Spookster is right ...

Look at this website (codingforums) ... click "view", "page source" (or HTML) ...
This whole site is generated by PHP script(s).

The search engines see what you're seeing.

[newmand2]

Just to add to what the other guys said, I'd imagine you have been told or misinterpreted the following incorrectly:

Search Engines tend not to like URLs such as www.yoursite.com/index.php?article=123456 since as far as they are concerned, it is the same page repeated over and over and over and over at least 123456 times.

However, whichever language you write your website it, your code will always be output as HTML (and javascript, etc).

If you have been unfortunate enough to structure your pages using GET variables, or if you're just generally interested I suggest you read this article (http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Apache/Search-Engine-Friendly-URLs-with-mod-rewrite/), or search for "Search Engine Friendly URLs" on a search engine.

HTH - Dave